Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Sore loser

Allow me to make a prediction. Hillary is less popular today than when she lost to Mr. Trump on Nov. 8. She will continue to be unpopular. My guess is she will be even more unpopular. She is not an agreeable presence on the political scene, and the American people know it. Think back to her tenure as first lady. No other first lady was consistently so unpopular as Hillary Rodham Clinton. Moreover, the American people do not admire a sore loser. Hillary will be known as the sorest loser in American history.

Now here is another prediction. If Hillary and her cadres in the Democratic Party along with the mainstream media continue to “resist” the 2016 election, Donald Trump will almost certainly be re-elected in 2020. Hillary and the Democrats’ “resistance” will repulse the American majority. Hillary and her left-wing cohorts will supply me with a gaudy show until the end.

Some laughed at me in 2016 when I was among the few who picked Donald Trump a winner. Some simply ignored me. I wonder what their reaction will be when Donald wins again.

President Barzani: those countries who say the referendum is ill timed, what is their suggestion for a good time? What is alternative?

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If not now, then when?

KRG President Massoud Barzani makes a good point there.

Repeatedly over the years, various think tanks -- including RAND -- have
warned that this issue has the potential to be an explosive one.

Which is why you don't leave it on the backburner.

If this had been addressed in 2007, for example, any fallout could have been addressed by now.

Grasp that the US military remains in Iraq.

Grasp that some will always insist that the US military remains.

The longer this issue of independence is postponed, the longer some will insist the US must remain in Iraq.

KURDISTAN 24 reports:The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has scheduled and insists on
holding a referendum on independence for the Kurdistan Region on Sep.
25, 2017, to decide whether or not to secede from the rest of Iraq.Barzani stated that the move toward independence is part of
a peaceful process aimed at deterring violence. “The main purpose [of
the referendum] is to prevent further tragedies and wars from taking
place[in the future].”Regarding the timing of the vote, the President noted that if the
Kurdistan Region waited for others to accept its decision, the right
time would never come.

“Independence is a legitimate claim for our people, and the
referendum can rightfully be held, at the earliest opportunity, so the
world can be made aware of the will of the people of Kurdistan… We do
not want to spend another 100-years repeating the same tragedies tied to
the Iraqi state.”

What a change that is from the Jalal Talabani -- the ridiculous Jalal.

Talabani
told a Turkish newspaper in an interview published on Monday that it
would not be realistic to believe that an independent Kurdish state
could survive as it is likely that neighboring countries Turkey , Iran and Syria would close their borders.

"I
tell my Turkish brothers not to fear that Kurds will declare
independence. It is an advantage for Kurds to stay within the borders of
Iraq in terms of their economic, cultural, social and political
interests," he told in the interview.

Sabah got the interview
and they quote Talabani stating, "Iraq will not be separated and the
civil war is over" and "The ideal of a united Kurdistan is just a dream
written in poetry. I do not deny that there are poems devoted to the
notion of a united Kurdistan. But we can not continue to dream." If
accurate, Talabani's remarks will spark anger among some Kurds. And it
may be a great deal of anger and it may be among many Iraqi Kurds.

Jalal Talabani, the sell out. The only time he ever fought was to be first in line at the all-you-can-eat buffet.

Regardless of how the vote turns out, no one can claim Barzani didn't try.

In familiar news, Mustafa Habib (NIQASH) reports:Last week, unknown assailants broke into the medical clinic of Iraqi
doctor, Salim Abdul-Hamzah, in the Maamel neighbourhood of Baghdad. In
other parts of Baghdad, two doctors were kidnapped: Mohammed Ali Zayer
who works in a hospital in the Sadr City area and Saad Abdul Hur who had
a private clinic in the New Baghdad neighbourhood. In the same week, a
dentist, Shatha Faleh, was killed in a medical centre in the Washwash
area.All of the above happened within the space of just one week in Baghdad. No wonder Iraqi doctors are worried.

“The recent crime wave targeting Iraqi doctors is catastrophic for
the country,” Jasib al-Hajami, a senior official in the Baghdad health
department, told NIQASH. “The doctors and medical staff are the real
wealth of our country and these crimes targeting them will push medical
professionals out of Iraq. In fact, many of them have migrated or are
thinking about migrating. More efforts must be made to protect them.”On June 25, doctors in Baghdad and in other parts of the country
organised sit-ins inside their local hospitals to protest the crime wave
that appeared aimed at them and their colleagues. Their banners called
upon the Ministry of Health to offer them better protection and the
individuals protesting also warned of a decrease in the number of
trained professionals in Iraq.
Familiar?

Longtime observers will read the above and nod while thinking of the
"brain drain" as it was called in earlier waves. Shi'ite militias
targeted doctors throughout the Iraq War. In part, it was a war on
science. The doctors and others with technical expertise that fled Iraq
during the waves were part of a "brain drain."

Since the 2003 U.S. invasion, Baghdad’s intellectual and cultural
elite has left its turbulent homeland, fleeing violence, persecution and
an economy with fewer and fewer good jobs. Tens of thousands have moved
to the U.S., where many have enjoyed considerable success. Over half a
million others—including many of the country’s most educated people—have
moved elsewhere in the Middle East. And their numbers have increased
since the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) conquered up to 40 percent of the country in 2014.ISIS
has since been pushed out of most of Iraq, but many Iraqis aren’t
returning. In countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and the Gulf states,
talented Iraqi émigrés continue to staff hospitals, design roads,
extract oil and lecture students. And as the country continues to bound
from one crisis to the next, in part due to rampant corruption and
mismanagement, its most educated citizens are succeeding in their new
homes—and finding life in exile more and more appealing.“We
needed a safe environment to work and live, and they needed skilled
labor,” says Ali Nawaz, a Saudi-based petroleum engineer, who skipped
out of Baghdad after a death threat in 2006. “It’s been a good match.”

Whether more will leave Iraq in the coming weeks or not, displacement with Iraq is expected to increase. NRT reports:

The U.N.’s humanitarian aid
coordinator for Iraq warned of possible evacuations of hundreds of
thousands of civilians as the Iraqi forces prepare for three other
operations against the Islamic State (ISIS) militants in the country.

“We think that by the end of those
military operations several hundred thousand more civilians are likely
to be displaced,” Lise Grande told reporters on Tuesday (August 8) in
Geneva.

Grande further said teams are moving to
areas near the expected operations in Tal Afar near Mosul and Hawija in
Kirkuk province to the southeast and the western Anbar province.